Thursday, November 4, 2010

It's About Time!!

mystery picture....ha....this was 13 years of thread that had wound around the wheels of my long-arm...Ron Paul said he was glad to see I actually used my machine....now, I am watching closely to see that I don't get thread in my tracks and around my wheels. It sured gave the gals in the class a big laugh!

our snow protector over the heat pump by my studio.This sunflower quilt was my favorite in the Innovations show...I have lost the name of the artist, but will find it and give her credit. It is painted and stitched....TOTALLY FABULOUS.

HI all....I did try to post last week, but something crazy happened to my nice long letter, and it disappeared....so I will try again today. I hope you are all enjoying a great fall and getting lots of quilting done. Ieven quilted two of my own tops yesterday and the day before. Even so, I did lots of customer quilts and am doing a very nice paper pieced block of the month. Boy, some teeny tiny pieces there. It is made by Sandra Chadwick in CT. Also received a Baltimore Album that took three years in the making...from my friend Pat Jennings in CT.

Well, after the great Leavenworth show I got busy with Innovations.

It was a great show, although not so big as usual, and there were fewer classes, too. A sign of the times, I guess. There were some really great pieces in the quilt show, and I took a class from Ron Paul on machine maintenance. I brought the head of my Gammill, and discovered I most probably needed a new motor. Well, it did sound like a cement mixer with marbles inside. We took the machine to Oregon and a great Gammill dealer and quilt shop, where I did get a new motor, my needle positioner switch replaced with a more modern new-fangled thingie, and a check-up. Guess I have to go back this spring for new gears. I didn't realize I had put that many miles on it.

Cindy Roth asked me to help her do a little program/trunk show one evening at Innovations. It was fun...question and answer and trunk show. I think it will be posted on her website...you will have to check it out. I hate to see myself on film, so likely won't look!

After Innovations I did a couple trunk shows for guilds...one in Anacortes for the Fidalgo Island Quilters...a great group of folks...and then for Bellingham, the Moonlight Quilters...another great group. It was fun, and I hope to be able to do workshops for them some day.

More teaching of quilting and woven quilts, and tomorrow I teach from The Bold and Beautiful book at Aunt Mary's at Smokey Point....then Saturday for a group of gals....machine quilting. It should be great fun.

Yesterday we had a great time giving the alpacas a pedicure...the hard part was catching them!

Our neighbor breeds alpacas, so we called him to do it....they were good boys once we caught them. The goats were curious as usual. Speaking of goats...we have two little bitty goats that live next door now....they are the cutest things, and cry like babies. I just had to check them to see if they were ok...they were! But they were sure crying like babies. They are small enough to pick up and hold and cuddle.

We have had sunny weather for 3 days. I am glad of that. We have been getting the pond plants out of the ponds and putting the lawn mowers into the barn...so I guess it is defnintely winter.

We also had to build a cover over our heat pump top keep the snow off the unit...it got pretty demolished 2 winters ago...just trying to be prepared. I don't think the insurance company will give us another one!

Oh, goodie.....chocolate cookies coming....Ken is going to make cookies later for my class tomorrow. YUM....

Well, that is about all the news for this time...I will hopefully be a little bit better about writing in the future. In the meantime, have a great weekend.....Judy

1 comment:

About Me

Hello, my name is Judy Irish, and I am a fabric/quil-taholic. I started out quite normal, and not addicted until after graduating from Michigan State University in 1964. With a degree in English/art, I soon began getting involved in all kinds of shady activities….drawing, tole painting, oil painting, jewelry making, stained glass, and on and on. There was little going on in the quilt world at that time, but I managed to do wall hangings, some quilts and fabric art gifts for friends and such, but could never quite get rid of my cravings for this terrible temptation. Over the next 20 years or so I kept things under control with occasional quilt shows and projects….but thankfully my busy schedule of teaching did not allow me to run amok completely.
I hope you will tune in to my blog to see what I have been up to!